Halleluja. As someone who just extricated herself from a relationship with an irrationally jealous man, I can tell you there is no worse relationship pain than dealing with a partner who sees everything and everyone as a threat to their relationship. I may have loved the guy, but it's not worth being owned ever. I hope she leaves him and gets therapy, or at least he wises up and leaves her before too much hell is experienced.

@13 nope, 100% garbage. Back in the middle ages one could understand why a physician would study astrology to try to predict if their patients would live or die, they had nothing else to work with. But now, we know what the lights in the sky are and we know how the physical world works much better and leaning on old superstitions is embarrassingly backwards and in this case counterproductive.

If only she was Ophiuchus...

@105 - Ha! I was wondering if someone might reference that...

"Such a direction, to me, seems very drastic."

People tut-tutted over homosexuality and miscegenation in the past as well, I don't see any reason why we should consider considering medical science and the way others are born "drastic". You can see it that way. But nature deems transpersons so.

"Female" is an adjective, and stereotyping is boring. Commenter #7 isn't a "gold-star faggot," as he claims, he's a gold-star bigot, but at least he was honest enough to share with us the limits of his feeble mind. How pitiful.

@108: Ten years ago he'd be trying to tell his partner that blue balls could kill a man if left untreated.

@100 I'm pretty sure very few trans persons for for things like surgery and hormones on whim. This isn't like getting a perm and that you know so very little about what a trans person goes through, and that you're only focusing on the sensational bits, what would say to someone who didn't have surgery I wonder, says a LOT about you. None of it good.

There is some truth in astrology, the stars do exist. That's about it though.

@91:

And why, if my ideas are so whacky, so off the mark, do you guys still sit on such anger about them? Why not just dismiss such ideas as those of a whack job.

Because your ideas are still held by a large percentage of the population and contribute to a culture that questions, shames, and stigmatizes trans people, to the point where 41% of them attempt suicide.

Is that simple enough for you?

@100: "My ideas hurt people?
You don't think injecting hormones and cutting into bodies,doesn't hurt people?
Insane. Ideas are to open the mind, no matter how hard that may be.
Humans have a body and a mind. Far as I see it;
Work on the mind First. Hard as one can.
Before altering the Body."

Well, let's see. Rather presumptuous of you, don't you think, to assume that transpeople haven't "work[ed] on the mind" as "hard as [they] can" before they ever do anything as radical as, say, talk about their identity with people on an internet forum, let alone consider taking steps to alter the physical body they were born with?
I assume that transpeople have thought plenty long and hard about their identity for quite some time--in some cases, decades--before taking steps to change their bodies.

But I think "work on the mind . . . hard as one can" suggests that you think that a transperson should work on his/her mind in order to "get over" the idea of being trans. Which implies that there is something wrong with being trans, or that being trans is a sickness one should try to cure oneself of--specifically, a mental illness. Which further suggests that being trans is a matter of being delusional or maladjusted.

And yes, I think that ideas like those do hurt people. They are responsible for self-hatred, for justified fears of never being accepted or embraced by their families, friends, society at large. Those ideas alienate people.

You suggest that injecting hormones and "cutting into bodies" hurts people. Done under medical supervision, injecting hormones is much like taking any medicine for a chronic condition: there are risks and side effects, but those are outweighed by the good those medicines do. As for the hurt caused by "cutting into bodies"--that cutting (if it's done at all, because it isn't always done) is done by surgeons, so again there are the same risks as accompany all surgeries. Which is to say, one should consider all surgeries carefully, but to act as though these surgeries somehow cause more damage than any other elective surgery reveals your bias, your perspective that there are some conditions you approve of treating and some you don't.

Here's the thing: you don't get to decide how other people should feel about their identities. Yes, you get to have your opinion, but if I remember correctly, you're the woman who doesn't want other people to tell you how you define your feminism. @113, seilo put it pretty saliently. Those ideas hurt people. They hurt directly in the form of stigmatization, discrimination, harassment, abuse, even murder. And they hurt indirectly or perhaps I should say invisibly in the form of self-loathing, shame, and depression.

So I guess of course you can have all the opinions and ideas you want, but it's rather disrespectful to come on this forum of all places, a place where tolerance of different sexualities, genders, orientations, and identities is kind of the point and keep on telling people that they're wrong, or sick, or need to examine where their bizarre mental states come from, or whatever it is you're doing when you continue to insist that people who identify themselves differently from the way you'd prefer they did need to do some hard thinking.

Oh really nocute? I've seen you come on these forums and say whatever you like, not respecting other's feelings not respecting other's points of view.
I'm not telling anyone how to conduct their lives. I've said- clearly-
I'm no longer going to partake in any discussions re the trans issues. Though, yes, some nasty woman above- drew me
Back in.
I do not apologize for having my ideas.
On your heads, keeping them stuck in the sand. On your heads, letting younger people, with gender issues- be lead in just one direction.

Ooooh, nasty, am I? *snort* And yet, you keep choosing to respond. As clashfan said @101, if you don't want to discuss these issues, then don't discuss them.

I do find it terribly ironic and rather sad that you seem to think that we're the ones with our heads stuck in the sand.

Jesus, there is not any debate about this at all in the scientific community. It's settled science... female-to-male transexuals have masculinized brains, while male-to-female transexuals have feminized brains. See the link below, which lays it out pretty clearly. The studies were all done before puberty and before treatment. The changes in the brain probably take place late in fetal development, and probably as a result of some combination of genetics and hormonal uterine environment. Significantly, these changes in brain nuclei occur independently of development of the genitalia (which is a rather more straightforward process, usually, and simply depends on whether you have a Y-chromosome or not). BTW, while the neocortex is indeed rather malleable (that's how we form new memories, after all), the brain nuclei responsible for gender identity DO NOT CHANGE AT ALL over a lifetime.

I mean, the mind IS the brain, right?, and one's gender identity is perceived in the brain, not in the mirror (or the pants).

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20…

@117: I suppose that just like astrologers, people who choose to disavow transpersons "know what they know" and no "closed minded" scientist could ever convince them otherwise.

I don't think LavaGirl is tranphobic in that she hates or fears Trans people, but I also don't think that anything we say is going to change her mind on this because her position is rooted in a visceral sense of body horror. There is no way she will ever get past the idea that gender reassignment surgery is mutilation. It is not rational; it's phobic in the true sense of the word.

For fuck's sake people.

When I encounter someone who doesn't believe in or agree with homosexuality/transgender-ness/abortion/atheism/whatever else I still expect that person to treat those he doesn't agree with with dignity. But some of you guys can't even muster the same respect for people who believe in something as innocuous as astrology.

How are we ever going to get to that point where people can co-exist with others who think differently from them on the bigger issues when we can't even do that with the smaller ones. If no one is getting harmed, then live and let live people.